Was Florida’s method for deciding whether murderers can face the death penalty constitutional?

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down Florida’s method for deciding whether a murderer is too intellectually disabled to face the death penalty.

Justices said the state’s inflexible standard reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of how IQ tests work and ignored the inherent difficulties of measuring intelligence.

The case, decided last month, centers on Freddie Lee Hall, now 68, who killed a pregnant woman and a sheriff’s deputy in Sumter County in 1978.

Hall scored 71 on an IQ test, and although he had scored higher on previous tests, he raised this low score as evidence of possible intellectual disability, requesting a chance to present further evidence.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court had barred executing the intellectually disabled in 2002, this would have saved him from death row. But Florida defined anyone with an IQ score over 70 as fit to face the death penalty, with no caveats.

Most states that still have the death penalty allow murderers who score above 70 to present other evidence of intellectual incapacity, such as psychologists’ testimony or real-life accounts. But not Florida.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the federal high court’s majority opinion last month that “intellectual disability is a condition, not a number.”

He argued that “a state that ignores the inherent imprecision of these tests risks executing a person who suffers from intellectual disability.”

But justices in the minority argued that states have a right to define intellectual disability as they choose, and that the state compensated for its inflexibility by allowing murderers to take multiple IQ tests.

Was Florida’s method for deciding whether murderers can face the death penalty constitutional? What do you think?